Blueno Doesn't Socialize
by Do Wop
Summary: Blueno completes a mission, killing somebody. To be more accurate, he kills three people. The problem is, he was only supposed to kill two of them.


Blueno waited patiently, keeping one eye on his watch. At 12:30 exactly, Fukurou would be in position, and then it would be time to make his move.

He hovered outside of the castle's tower, using Geppou first with one foot, then the other, in perfect rhythm to keep him steady. He could simply open an Air Door to slip inside, and then wait for the correct moment, but he preferred to wait outside. Lurking behind an Air Door rendered him effectively invisible, but there were still ways to detect him. It was safer this way.

The seconds hand on his watch ticked past the twelve, lining up the minutes and hours hands to read 12:30. Without a word, Blueno opened an Air Door and stepped through.

He walked casually through the wall, the Air Door's effects rendering him intangible. Once inside, he surveyed the scene. As predicted, the old king of the island of Norkia was alone, save for a single guard. The king was the target. The guard would be the scapegoat.

Blueno opened up a second Air Door, diving through with his finger extended. His Shigan plunged between the King's eyes before he could even react to the strange sight. The target was now down. Now he needed to establish the scapegoat.

The guard has shouted a curse and whipped his pistol out of the holster. A West Blue six-shot model. Perfect. Blueno allowed him to get off one shot before activating Soru. He vanished, reappearing directly behind the guard. With one smooth motion, he grabbed the scapegoat's gun hand, pulled it upwards so that the barrel was pointed at his temple, and pulled the trigger.

Blueno released the guard's limp body, letting it collapse to the floor like a doll. There. Any investigation would come to the conclusion that the guard shot the king, and then took his own life. The target was neutralized and Cipher Pol 9's hand was obscured. Mission accomplished.

He turned to open another Air Door and escape, but before he could do so the room's door was thrown open, and a tall, armored man with an enormous sword burst into the room.

_Rackham, the captain of the guard, _Blueno thought. This was unfortunate. The mission dossier specifically stated that the captain was to remain unmolested if at all possible; Although the King's seditious talk needed to be silenced, his only heir was a young boy who was a decade away from sitting the throne. If the country was to avoid falling into chaos during that time, it would need a strong regent, and the captain fit the bill perfectly.

Fukurou was _supposed_ to be keeping him distracted at the other end of the castle, in order to avoid exactly this problem. Unfortunately, things had apparently not gone according to plan.

Rackham crossed the floor with three ponderous steps, with his sword held high above his head and a battle cry ripping from his throat. Blueno turned to face him as he brought the blade crashing down. "Tekkai," he said dispassionately, and his body hardened into iron. The sword, apparently made of poor steel, broke against him and fell into pieces.

Undeterred by the loss of his sword, Rackham dropped the now-useless remains of the blade and struck out with a fist. Blueno avoided it easily, using Kami-e to slip to the side.

Blueno took the offensive, bringing up one hand to perform a deadly Shigan, but to his surprise the attack passed right through the armored man. He stumbled forward, his whole body going through the space that Rackham should be occupying.

_Interesting,_ Blueno thought as he turned to face his opponent again. _Must be some sort of Devil's Fruit. The Sprite Sprite fruit, maybe?_ Whatever fruit it was, it was rendering Rackham intangible and, as such, much more difficult to kill.

The Captain of the Guard unleashed a flurry of punches, but Blueno slipped between them with Kami-e while he puzzled out how to kill him. Spandam would likely be annoyed by the violation of the mission parameters, but the situation had changed. Maintaining the secrecy of the CP9's existence took precedence over everything else. But first, he had to figure out how do it...

Ah, of course. Intangibility made him untouchable, but it also made it impossible to attack. Is Rackham wanted to hit Blueno, he had to make himself vulnerable. Blueno stopped dodging, and let the Captain connect with a single punch.

It wasn't a bad punch. He couldn't judge as precisely as Fukurou, but he'd estimate the blow at one or two hundred Douriki. More than sufficient to deal with most foes, but Blueno was well out of his league. The CP9 agent's leg whipped up with blinding speed, firing off a Rankyaku that severed the guardsman's leg.

Rackham was a brave man. He didn't scream with pain or thrash the way a lesser man would. He simply gritted his teeth as he fell backwards to the ground. Blueno's left hand shot out and grabbed his forehead, hoisting him up. His right hand came up, shooting towards Rackham's throat with finger extended. Blueno's baritone voice thundered: "Shigan!"

Rackham fell to the ground with a sickening wet noise. Blueno considered the scene before him, thinking of a way to disguise his presence. Unfortunately, it didn't seem possible. Firing off the revolver again could explain away the Shigan wound, but the severed leg would be problematic. He could take the body with him, but not only was that an extremely unpleasant thought, having the Captain of the Guard mysteriously vanish would likely raise more questions than it would put to rest. Nothing in the room explicitly tipped the CP9's hand. At worst, it would just generate one more rumor.

Content to leave it as is, Blueno opened up an Air Door, making his escape.

* * *

"Another mission accomplished, chapapa."

Blueno grunted. The constant daylight of Enies Lobby gave him headaches, and he could feel one coming on now as he and Fukurou stepped off the marine ship onto solid ground. "Not as successfully as we might have hoped," he pointed out. "We were supposed to leave the captain alive. What happened to the distraction you were setting up, anyway?"

Fukurou looked away, slightly embarrassed. "Well...someone told one of the maids that there was going to be an attempt on the King's life. And then she ran to tell the Captain, chapapa."

Blueno shrugged. It would impact Fukurou's record, not his, and even then it probably wouldn't impact it too greatly. Fukurou had trouble keeping his mouth shut, but he was in all other respects an extremely effective assassin.

Their procession, both CP9 agents with a dozen (entirely superfluous) guards flanking them on each side, made its way through the judicial island towards the drawbridge that would take them to the Tower of Justice. Fukurou chattered pointlessly the whole way, regaling Blueno with the tale of how Captain Burgess' son had run off to join a pirate crew, and how Spandam had developed an ingrown toenail that pained him greatly, and how Jyabura had been caught spying on Kalifa in the bath (again) and was now nursing a black eye. Blueno, for his part, maintained his silence, grunting every now and then to assure Fukurou that he was listening.

Jyabura was waiting to greet them at the entrance to the Tower of Justice. Well, that wasn't a completely accurate statement; it would be more correct to say that Jyabura was waiting on the staircase inside, a jug full of whiskey, or some other beverage containing enough alcohol to poison Funkfreed to death. As Fukurou had said, the left side of his face was now swollen and blackened.

Despite the injury, he seemed to be in good spirits. He lifted the jug to his lips as they approached, letting the alcoholic beverage cascade down his throat. "Back from another kill, eh? Who was it this time?"

"The King of Norkia, chapapa," Fukurou said. "Blueno also killed the Captain of the Guard, even though we weren't supposed to."

"That was your fault," Blueno pointed out. Fukurou shrugged and leaped up the steps, using Geppou to propel himself upwards, towards the Director's office.

Blueno shook his head slightly, then continued up the stairs, past Jyabura. As he passed him, Jyabura lowered the jug for a moment and looked up at him.

"We're all going out drinking tonight," he said. "One of those little bars the marines hang out in. We'll sneak in and then all show ourselves at once and scare them shitless." That last was such an amusing thought that Jyabura threw back his head and howled with laughter. Blueno shook his head.

"No thank you. I have paperwork to do." He turned to continue up the stairs.

Jyabura used Geppou twice, and suddenly he was standing in Blueno's path. "Come on," he said, "even Lucci's going to be there. Unwind and have some fun for once!"

"I said," Blueno rumbled, "no thank you." Then he pushed past Jyabura, continuing up the stairs. Jyabura shrugged, and took another drink.

When Blueno reached the Director's office, the door was hanging open. Through the doorway, he could see Spandam sitting at his desk, a cup of coffee at his side and a set of files laid out before him. Fukurou sat on a bench opposite him, looking vaguely ashamed of himself.

"Ah, Blueno!" Spandam said, waving him in. "Come in, come in. Sit." He seemed to be in a good mood for someone who was no doubt about to read them both the riot act. Blueno took a seat beside Fukurou.

Spandam began flipping through pages with great gusto. "Another job well done," he said. "We got the report from our agents in Norkia that the King was mysteriously killed by an unknown assailant. There was no hint of World Government involvement, and the investigation is turning up nothing but dead ends. A complete success!"

"In fact," he continued as he found the sheet he had been looking for and held it out in front of him, "there's only one thing amiss. According to the spy reports, there were in fact _three_ corpses in the tower when that poor servant stumbled upon them: The king, the guard on duty, and the Captain of the Guard."

Blueno rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly. Here it came. Already, Spandam was adopting an expression of mock confusion. "But how odd!" he said. "Why, I have right here a copy of the mission dossier, which specifically states that the Captain of the Guard was not to be harmed! I wonder how that happened," he said, his tone suddenly dark and threatening.

"It was Fukurou's responsibility to keep Rackham out of the-"

"I don't want to hear your excuses!" Spandam shouted, slamming his fist into the desk. The blow sent his coffee skittering off of the desk, landing upside-down in his lap.

"Aaaah!" Spandam screamed, shooting out of his chair and batting at his scalded crotch with both hands. "Hot hot hot hot hot hot hooooooot!"

As he stood, the coffee mug tumbled from his lap, landing on his foot. The left foot, which contained the ingrown toenail that Fukurou had been telling Blueno about earlier. His eyes crossed, his face turned terribly pale, and he fell to the ground, grasping at his foot as painful spasms wracked his body.

Blueno waited patiently as his superior writhed and screamed, working the pain out of his system in the noisiest possible manner. When Spandam finally quieted down and hoisted himself into his chair, Blueno spoke.

"My report will describe in detail exactly what happened," he said. "It should be on your desk by morning. Is there anything else?"

Spandam eyed him for a moment, as if trying to think of an excuse to hold him up longer out of sheer spite, but then turned away with a dismissive hand gesture. "No, you're free to go. Both of you. But make sure the reports are in my hands tomorrow."

Blueno and Fukurou both stood, and walked towards the door. Blueno was passing through the threshold when Spandam thought of something else.

"Oh, Fukurou? Make sure that the report only talks about the kill this time. I don't need any more reports with paragraphs describing the gripping romance between Lieutenant Ingram and that waitress from the bar."

"Chapapa" was all that Fukurou said.

* * *

Blueno walked down the stairs into the Tower's basement. His quarters were down here, away from Enies Lobby's eternal sunshine. He had decided on that deliberately when he had selected it: It was the only real escape from the light, and he didn't feel like suffering perpetual migraines.

The privacy was the other deciding factor. Not only was it far enough away from the busiest part of the Tower to discourage casual visitors, but it was also, technically speaking, not a room at all. It was actually an error on the architect's part: A small cube of walled-in space, just large enough to live in. By the time they'd realized it was there, construction was already complete, and it was judged more cost-effective to simply leave it in place.

It was completely inaccessible, and as such had been left alone for decades, but nothing was inaccessible for Blueno. He stepped in front of a seemingly random section of wall, pressed up against it, and said "Door Door." The wall swung inwards, and he closed it behind him as he stepped inside.

He did not wait for his eyes to adjust. He knew very well that they would not, as the room was completely impervious to light. Instead, he struck a match from the box he kept in his pocket, and by its light lit the candle on his beside table.

He made a quick circuit of the room, lighting the other candles. He could, of course, simply open a door in the room's ceiling to let some light in. Jyabura's garden was directly above him, and the loudmouthed fool had yet to notice holes appearing in his grass. But for now, he preferred to remain in the dark, and do his paperwork by candlelight.

He picked his reading glasses off of the bedside table, then sat in front of his desk and examined the forms he had to fill out before his report could be complete. Was he supposed to fill in form A56-7 (Death in excess of mission parameters) or form B99 (Civilian casualties)? Either one could apply, but he couldn't submit both. Sometimes he swore that Spandam made these things difficult on purpose.

He sighed, leaning back into his chair. Maybe he _should_ go to the bar with the others. It might be as fun as Jyabura had said...but no. There was work to be done. Blueno pushed his glasses back up his nose, and pressed his pen to the page.


End file.
